This is my seventy-fourth Foto Friday post. The pictures today are from Flaming Geyser State Park, a song recording, a shark, and Coral. Full set with all 44 photos can be viewed here.
Took Juliana to Flaming Geyser State Park again two Saturdays ago since the weather was still brilliant. Didn't go inner tubing this time since it was a bit cooler, but we did go hiking around the park.
Spring is in full bloom here in Washington state and I am lovin' it. Mid-60s temperatures with a few days of rain. Flowers are out and the grass is green. Well, I guess it always is here.
While Flaming Geyser State Park is an 8-mile drive from SR 18, it's still not safe from graffiti, apparently. There is a big bridge at the entrance to the park and Julie and I went under it to find this bit of street art. I've seen worse.
Almost ran into this little guy who was hanging around from a tree along the path we were on. Would not have been the first time for me. Not sure what species of worm these are. Have read that mimosa webworms, cankerworms, and leaf tiers caterpillars all do this, but I think this one is an oak leaf roller. I love taking pictures of bugs with my macro feature.
Eventually made our way to the little creek that run into the Green River. It's shallow enough to wade and play around in. Julie absolutely loved it. There were tons of tiny fish in the creek. I almost caught one, but it jumped out of my hands. >.<
We did a little more hiking after that, but eventually stumbled upon a huge mud pit in the middle of the trail. It forced us to go back.
Overall, it was a super fun day that Julie and I enjoyed very much.
The next day, I took my former church pastor and his daughter up to a co-worker's home recording studio to record a couple songs. You see, Pastor Brian's daughter, Michaela, is a great singer and has posted a couple videos online of herself singing. Seeing as how I enjoyed her songs and I like helping people out, I decided to try and see if she wanted to professional record any of her songs. She took me up on the offer and so we went to Mike's studio to record.
Mike is a co-worker and friend of mine who has helped set up for my podcast a couple times. His studio is in his basement and it's very nice for a home recording studio. Really like how he has everything set up. It's the second personal audio studio I've been in. Levi also has one where he masters songs and records for music artists. You can see pictures of his place here.
Brian played guitar, djembe, and tambourine for Michaela's two songs that we recorded. We had them play and sing at the same time instead of separate tracks since that's what they were used to. I think they were troopers and did a great job.
It looks like Michaela had a lot of fun. What do you think? The first song we did is one that she recorded on her laptop and posted on YouTube. It's called "Hey, Look at That Guy" and you can watch it here.
I'm pretty sure that Brian had just as much fun.
Mike is also super talented at what he does and made the song sound great. He was very patient with us and hooked us up with a great deal on the session.
Here's a video I put together of one of Michaela and Brian's takes. It's not the final mixed version, but gives you a great idea of the talent behind the music. The song is done, but I'll wait on Michaela to post it wherever she wants before I share it here. Her and her family are moving to Walla Walla to start a new church plant. It's very sad to see this great family go, but I know they will be doing awesome work there.
In other news, I just realize that I never mentioned it on here, but the studio where I work recently won a very important award from the Broadcast Engineering magazine. I'm sure most of you haven't heard of it, but it's actually quite the publication when it comes to video and audio recording studios, venues, and events. Anyway, we were the winner of the "New Studio Technology - Non-Broadcast" award after our upgrade to HD by Diversified Systems. One of the aspects mentioned in the article was the SAN, which is the primary thing that I am responsible for at Microsoft Production Studios. As a gift, all of the members of the engineering team here at Studios got one of these pictures to keep. It was a really nice gesture by our management. The plaque we got can be seen here.
Here is the team picture that we had taken of us by the lovely Renee. Very proud to work with all of these guys as they are certainly some of the smartest and most talented folks in the business. Microsoft don't hire no dummies, yo.
Well, you know what they say about all work and no play. The story behind this is that I send Andrew an e-mail about once a month telling him that he should buy something. Sometimes it's a Millennium Falcon guitar, others times it's Spock ears. Last month, it was a 5-foot inflatable shark. Up until now, he's never taken me up on a random purchase, but for the first time, he actually pulled the trigger on something stupid that I told him to buy. And it was worth every penny.
I got out the RC helicopter that I keep at work and we flew our toys around in one of the empty stages on a quiet Friday. Lots of fun. I pretended like there was a giant flying shark attacking the city. I could not stop giggling like a little boy.
And what would a Foto Friday be without some pictures of Coral? She grows in cuteness every single day. It's amazing how much less stressed Bethany and I are as parents with her. I think it's just experience after the first one. When Coral cries, we seem to accurately know exactly what she wants. She sleeps pretty well at night. Likely because she eats very well.
Here she is in her Hammer Pants. We're also surprised with how much Juliana still loves her and enjoys seeing her. We thought that would last about... a day, but she's quite fond of her little sister. Makes it a bit easier on us. To see more pictures of Coral, the shark, Michaela's recording session, and Flaming Geyser, view the full set.
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